Messages
11/2/2021
23 : 4
New blog post
This morning I published How The Sample drives thousands of newsletter subscriptions. I feel like the title makes it sound cooler than it is, but I mean, we do generate over 2k subscriptions for other
10/4/2021
22 : 44
Why I changed my mind about advertising
I just published Why I changed my mind about advertising (here's the Tweet for any discussion). Also a few days ago I published Curating the curators. I'm resuming my weekly publishing cadence
9/5/2021
15 : 24
Looking forward to buying my first yacht
Hey everyone. My habit of writing regularly has completely disintegrated, and I'm in the process of developing a new workflow, but in the mean time I thought I'd say "hey everyone"
8/3/2021
21 : 54
Finishing up Findka's grand scheme
Future of Discovery 3 August 2021 – Jacob O'Bryant Over the weekend we visited LA for my brother-in-law's wedding reception. First time flying with the baby. She's seven months old now.
7/27/2021
17 : 54
The Findka API
Future of Discovery 27 July 2021 – Jacob O'Bryant We made a handful of updates to The Sample's algorithm last week. One nice thing about having a small portion of the recommendations be totally
7/20/2021
17 : 24
The Sample Roadmap
Future of Discovery 20 July 2021 – Jacob O'Bryant I finally finished the big refactoring for The Sample. Now its recommendations are generated by the same API server that's been driving
7/13/2021
14 : 54
The Sample: from 1,100 to 3,000 subscribers
Future of Discovery 13 July 2021 – Jacob O'Bryant Something good happened this week: The Sample's subscriber base tripled (yay). I wrote an article (with the same name as this newsletter) about
7/6/2021
18 : 14
The Substack Narrative
After the Show HN last week, someone evidently submitted one of my essays. It hit #1 on HN and got about 20k views. It's not really that great of an essay, but of course quality and popularity are
6/29/2021
20 : 54
Highlights from Show HN: The Sample
I posted The Sample on Hacker News yesterday and there was a good discussion (about 30 comments, half from me). Since I spent all day responding to comments and hitting refresh on our subscriber count
6/22/2021
17 : 24
Why I'm excited about newsletters
This week I've written yet another explanation of my business. Most of the time I describe the short-term/current version of it, since that's what potential users care about. It's somewhat
6/18/2021
6 : 44
Roots and Branches: Centralization and the Role of Software Startups
Is it not the loftiness of thy vineyard—have not the branches thereof overcome the roots which are good? And because the branches have overcome the roots thereof, behold they grew faster than the
6/18/2021
6 : 44
The recommender system you've always wanted
I mentioned last week that I'm planning to start freelancing. I've been about two weeks away from doing that for the past six months. On one hand, it's not necessarily a huge change—I'
6/15/2021
15 : 14
App idea: casual curated newsletters
The Sample reached an important milestone today: (That's a dynamically rendered page; I happened to catch it at the right time.) We also got a couple shout-outs: Fint og morsomt indeed. And on a
6/9/2021
14 : 24
Protocol-based social networking, today
Future of Discovery has a new look—I've switched from Substack to Buttondown, which I discuss below. I'm also going to try inserting stuff at the top of the emails, before the main article (
6/9/2021
14 : 24
1-click subscribe for newsletters
Happy memorial day (or day after, by the time you get this). I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was planning to set up an API server that will provide the recommendations for both The Sample and
6/9/2021
14 : 24
What I'm trying to do
I've almost finished the API server migration and getting Findka Essays back up; ETA is a couple days. My article for this week is basically a personal mission plan. I'd like to make more